More reasons to be skittish about NASH

Billions of dollars of revenue await the company that can develop a treatment for NASH, a prevalent fatty-liver disease. But finding such a treatment has proved to be more complicated than many once thought.

Which brings us to yesterday, coincidentally the second incarnation of International NASH Day, when a company called Cymabay disclosed that its drug, seladelpar, failed to reduce liver fat in a study on 181 patients. Over 12 weeks, patients on placebo actually did numerically better than those getting seladelpar, which, in general, is a bad sign.

It also comes on the heels of some high-profile NASH failures that have left investors a little skittish about the field as a whole. And that’s perhaps why Genfit, a French company with a NASH drug of its own, took the uncommon step of writing a “Dear investor” letter that outlined the differences between Cymabay’s molecule and its own. Genfit’s share price fell about 14% anyway.